The Four Lives

There is nothing sweeter than understanding. Understanding our society, our culture, our roots, our beginnings and our end. For understanding is what our souls seek. True word is sweeter than the sweetest song.

When we are young, we start learning and understanding the first order concepts--our ABC's and our numbers. From those foundations we jump on to higher-order ideas. They serve as our building blocks. In order to understand a complex phenomenon, we need a framework. We use our fundamental building blocks to create that framework.

From a very high level perspective, we live four lives. Our first life is our infancy. This is when we are totally dependent upon our guardians. They feed us, they bathe us, and they make sure that we don't fall. They teach us how to walk and talk. This life is nothing but utter oblivion. As surprising as it may sound, this phase of life is a major determinant in our personalities to come.

As we grow older, and develop personalities, our lives tend to branch out in three directions. The first is our Extended Life. Extended life refers to elements such as the city we live in, the traffic we face everyday, the restaurants we visit, our weather patterns, the fashions that surround us, etc. For example, a person living in Manhattan has strikingly different extended life than a person living along Amazon in South American jungles. Our extended lives play a role in determining who we are, but only upto a certain extent.

The second branch is Immediate Life. Immediate life refers to our family, our friends, our loved ones, our romantic partners, our co-workers, our homes, our relatives, etc. For example, an orphan living in a foster home has a very different immediate life than a child that has six siblings and loving parents. Besides food and the basic needs, we need love more than anything else. We may not realize it, or admit it, but we do. It is our immediate surroundings that provide us with love. For no matter how beautiful a city you live in, if you are alone, it doesn't make a difference. Hence, immediate life is a bigger determinant of who we are than the extended.

The third branch, the one often overlooked, is our Inner Life. The inner life refers to our spirituality, our faith, our soul, and the truth. Shockingly, a very small number of people pay attention to this reservoir of peace and energy. Partly, it is because there is little guidance to our inner lives. We see Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer talking about our selves, we read Rumi and Hafez, we read Jung discussing self-realization, we know about whirling dervishes, but spirituality remains nebulous to us. Nothing is a bigger determinant of our personalities than how well connected we are to our true selves.

In fact, it is in the pursuit of our Inner Life wherein lies peace and tranquility.